Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has been called to task over comments he made about homos-xuality as it relates to the law. The 76-year-old was participating in a panel discussion at Princeton Law School Monday (Dec. 10), in promotion of his new book Reading Law, when a gay student asked him about a case in which he likened laws banning sodomy to those banning bestiality and murder.

Noting that he doesn’t equate a gay lifestyle with murder, Scalia explained the comparison. “It’s a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the ‘reduction to the absurd,’” he explained to freshman student Duncan Hosie. “If we cannot have moral feelings against homos-xuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?”

After the short verbal showdown, audience members reportedly clapped louder for Hosie than for Scalia.

This is’nt the first time Scalia has been called out. In 2005, another student, Eric Berndt, prodded Scalia to explain his views over whether or not keeping tabs on what goes on in a person’s bedroom is un-constitutional. “Do you sodomize you wife?” Berndt asked.

Scalia did not respond.

The timing of his words are noteworthy, being that the Supreme Court recently announced that it would review two cases that challenge the Constitutional ban on gay marriage.